Digital Technology: Skilled Workforce
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The noble Lord is right. Actually 17% of people who work in the tech sector and 9.5% of students taking computer science A-levels are female, yet women make up almost half the workforce. We are taking forward plans. There are a number of programmes already in place to do that: CyberFirst Girls Competition, the TechFuture Girls programme, Code First: Girls, techmums, Mums in Technology, Microsoft’s DigiGirlz events and a number of others. It is absolutely on the radar screen.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the importance of the enterprise investment scheme in stimulating equity investment in a lot of these new digital companies? It is one of the reasons why so many have got off the ground.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I am aware of the enterprise investment scheme. It is one of the ways that we can promote start-up companies. It is more risky, but there are advantages to it, so I take my noble friend’s point.
Banks: Internet Banking
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight
Lord Ashton of Hyde
Of course, the point of setting up the regulatory system is that it is for the regulators to deal with consumer detriment, which is exactly what the Financial Conduct Authority has done. I believe that the banks involved in this have said that they would not allow consumers to suffer detriment.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that part of the problem is that the long-standing banks have computer systems that go back a long way and which are often very difficult to modernise? They cannot suddenly turn off the whole of their system for a fortnight and put in a brand new one, so existing systems keep getting added to until the scope for mistake and failure if anything gets greater.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I accept that old IT systems are more difficult to modernise than starting from scratch. That is why many challenger banks are now in the pipeline, ready to compete with the older banks. The Government support challenger banks and encourage customers who wish to change their banks to do so, and 2.1 million customers have done so under the CASS system.
Tax Credits: Impact of Cuts
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, would the Minister agree with the fact that wages have risen faster in the past six months than since before 2007? Has that anything to do with the tax credit reforms?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I did not know that they had risen that fast. The former Chancellor, Alistair Darling, said that tax credits were never intended to subsidise lower wages. However, the current Chancellor has been very careful not to claim that tax credits have depressed wages. The fact is that we want to increase people’s wages. We introduced the national living wage and we want people to keep more of what they earn, rather than subsidising people through the benefits system.